Joe Lansdale: Dead in the West

"Sanctimonious sonofabitch," Montclaire said under his breath.

IV

Up in room thirteen, the Reverend sat on the sagging bed to test it. It would not be comfortable. He got up and went over to the washbasin, removed his hat, washed his face and then his hands. He was tedious with his hands, as if there were stains on them visible only to him. He dried meticulously, went over to the window to look out.

Pushing a curtain aside, he examined the street and the buildings across the way. He could hear hammering coming from Rhine's blacksmith shop, and below a wagon creaked by with squeaky wheels. Out in the distance, just at the edge of town, he could hear faintly the noises of chickens and cows. Just a pleasant little farming community.

Voices began to buzz in the street as more and more people moved about.

A team of mules in harness was being giddyupped down the street—their owner walking behind them— directing them out of town toward a field.

Seeing the mules sent the Reverend's thoughts back twenty years, back to when he was a ragtail kid, not too unlike David at Rhine's livery. A kid dressed in overalls, walking behind his minister father as he plowed a big team of mules, cutting tiny grooves into a great big world.

The Reverend tossed his saddlebags on the bed. He took off his coat, slapped dust from it, and draped it over a chair. He sat down on the edge of the bed, opened one of the bags, and removed a cloth-wrapped package.

He unwrapped the whisky bottle, bit the cork out, and put it and the cloth on the chair.

Next he stretched out on the bed, his head cushioned by a pillow. He began slowly tilting the whisky, and as he did, he saw a spider on the ceiling. It was tracing its way across the room, supported on a snow-white strand that connected with other strands in a corner of the room, twisted and interlocked like the tedious weaving of the mythical fates.

A muscle in his right cheek jumped.

He switched the bottle to his left hand, and his right-hardly aware of the desire of his brain—quick-drew his revolver and calmly shot the spider into oblivion.

V

Montclaire was beating on the door.

Plaster rained down from the ceiling and fell on the Reverend's impassive face.

The Reverend got up, opened the door as he stuck the Navy back in his sash. "You okay, Reverend?" Montclaire said.

The Reverend leaned against the doorjamb. "A spider. The devil's own creatures. I cannot abide them."

"A spider? You shot a spider?"

The Reverend nodded.

Montclaire moved closer to the doorway for a look inside. The sun was lancing through a slit in the curtains, catching the drifting plaster in its rays. It looked like a fine snow. He looked at the hole in the ceiling. There were legs around the hole. The bullet had punched the big spider dead center and the legs had stuck to the ceiling, glued there by spider juice.

Before pulling his head out, Montclaire saw the whisky bottle setting beside the bed.

"You got him, I hope," Montclaire said sarcastically.

"Right between the eyes."

"Now look here. Preacher or not, I can't have people shooting up my hotel. I run a nice respectable place here...."

"It's an outhouse and you know it. You should pay me to stay here."

Montclaire opened his mouth, but something on the Reverend's face held him.

The Reverend reached into his pocket and took out a fist full of bills. "Here's a dollar for the spider. Five for the hole."

"Well sir, I don't know..."

"That's respectable spider bounty, Montclaire, and it's my head beneath the hole if it rains."

"That's true," Montclaire said. "But I run a respectable hotel here, and I should be compensated for...."

"Take it or leave it, windbag."

Looking indignant about it, but not too indignant, Montclaire held out his hand. The Reverend put the promised bills there.

"I suppose that is fair enough, Reverend. But remember my customers pay for peace and quiet as well as lodging and...."

The Reverend stepped back into the room and took hold of the door.

"Then give us some peace and quiet." He slammed the door in Montclaire's face.

Montclaire took his money and went downstairs, thinking of better things to do with it than repair a hole in the ceiling of room thirteen.

VI

He had killed the spider because it was part of his recurring nightmare. So bad was this night dream, he hated to see the sun fall down behind the sky and die in shadow, the time of sleep to draw near.

The dream was full of warped memories. They flashed through the depths of his mind like ghosts. And the most terrifying part concerned the spider—or spiderlike thing. It was as if it were supposed to represent or warn him of something.

One full year of that dream with the pressure of its darkness growing heavier each time.

And it was as if it were pushing him, guiding him toward some destination, some destiny he was to fulfill.

Or perhaps it was nothing more than the shadows of his dying faith, trying to collect themselves once again into a solid lie.

But if there was something to them, guided by heaven or hell, he felt deep in his bones that that something was to be found here. In Mud Creek.

Why he was not certain. Certainly God had long ago given up on him. If this was to be his last showdown, God would not be on hand to aid him.

He tried not to think about it. He took a sip of his whisky.

He looked at the ceiling. "Why has thou forsaken me?"

After a minute of silence a grim smile parted his lips. He lifted the bottle upwards as if in toast.

"That's what I thought you'd say."

He drank a long drought of his liquid hell.

VII

Slow and easy—the contents of the bottle disappearing with the slow light of the sun—

the Reverend drank, headed toward that dark riverbank where he would board the black dream boat that sailed into view each time he stupored himself to sleep.

The bottle was empty.

Groggy, the Reverend sat up in bed and reached for his saddlebags and his next coin of passage. He took out another bottle, removed the cloth, spat away the cork, and resumed his position. After three sips his hand eased to the side of the bed, and the bottle slipped from it, landed upright on the floor—a few drops sloshing from the lip.

The curtains billowed in the open window like blue bloated tongues.

The wind was cool-damp with rain. Thunder rumbled gently.

And the Reverend descended into nightmare.

There was a boat and the Reverend got on it. The boatman was dressed in black, hooded.

A glimpse of his face showed nothing more than a skull with hollow eye sockets. The boatman took six bits from the Reverend for passage, poled away from shore.

The river itself was darker than the shit from Satan's bowels. From time to time, white faces with dead eyes would bob to the surface like fishing corks, then drift back down into the blackness leaving not a ripple.

Up shit river without a paddle.

The boatman poled on down this peculiar river Styx with East Texas shores, and along these shores, the Reverend saw the events of his life as if they were part of a play performed for river travelers.

But none of the events he saw were the good ones, just the dung of his life, save one—

and it was a blessing as well as a curse.

There on the shore, in plain sight—unlike the way it had happened in a bed in the dark of his sister's room— were he and his sister, holding each other in sweaty embrace, copulating like farm animals. In his memory, it had always been a sweet night like a velvet embrace, there had been love as well as passion. But this was lust, pure and simple.

It was not pleasant to look at.

He tried to look away from the next scene of the play, but his eyes remained latched. And before the boat sailed on, he watched his father materialize and discover them, and he heard his father curse them and damn them both. Then his younger self was bolting for his pants and leaping (it had been a window in real life) outwards and away—to run along the banks of the river, until his form grew dark and fell apart like fragments of smoked glass.